Divorce rates drop as couples realize it’s cheaper to stay together

December 23, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Hitched to the economy

Divorce rates drop as couples realize it’s cheaper to stay together
By Marty Orgel

2008 12 21

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The recession and economic turmoil is creating a new class of casualties: Married couples who can’t afford to get divorced. In these tough times many people are finding it’s cheaper to stay together, even when they can’t stand each other.

“The reason that the economy has such an enormous impact on divorce is that most people in the middle-income brackets are getting by on whatever income they have. They’re just getting by,” said Bonnie Booden, a family law and divorce attorney in Phoenix.

A major factor in the divorce downturn, Booden said, is divorced couples have to establish two separate households with current funds — a prohibitive factor when you’re looking at divorce in tough economic times….(Full Story)
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F4L: No kidding, it is cheaper living for two in one common household than it is for two singles in one separate household each!  Who would have thought!!

Well, for one thing, the judges in the divorce courts still don’t think so. They obviously believe that income, even if a man lost his job in these troubled times, miraculously grows to catch up to the entitlements the judges keep awarding to those little, poor victim wives.

Nevertheless, I bet that just as unbridled economic growth fueled the divorce industry and just as tough economic times make it shrink and shrivel, so any any divorce attorney in a formerly thriving industry will now be quite happy to have a little extra income by writing articles, at $500 or so a pop, about a good thing that was and is no more.

It is odd that Bonnie Booden did not mention that she is a member of another  new class of casualties, divorce attorneys that may well have to close down their practices and start doing a different sort of work for a living, for lack of work from people wanting to have a divorce but not being able to afford the luxury.

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